[2024] Thorpe Park: Hyperia - Mack Hypercoaster

[Matt N]

You are correct, but that is completely irrelevant to the point being made here. The point being that there is a large section of un used land that could be used, does not matter why it is un used, just that it is unused.

Same goes for Wicker Man, we have a large section of land the Flume used that Wicker Man does not. The fact it is un used because it is protected is completely mute and irrelevant in this point. The parallels can be drawn that both of these coasters do not use up as much land as the ride that was there previously.

In Wicker Man's case, that had no impact on ride experience, the ride was (edit, IS!) excellent.

Then on the back of that, the point I was then trying to make, was that newer rides do not always have to use all the space the ride on the land used before to be good, history has shown us this.

Hope that makes sense, nested points within points.

Ah sorry; I thought you were saying that Wicker Man left The Flume’s wooded section unused merely because they didn’t want to use it.

Personally, I don’t think it needed to use the woods either. I love Wicker Man to bits in its current form, personally!

 

[Hew878787]

it has always surprised me that Nemesis never got more complaints about its length (not that I personally think it’s a problem, it just surprised me based on the comments aimed

In fairness there’s not a lot more that could’ve been done with Nemesis to make it any longer (Thank God.) obviously it would lose momentum & adding length for the sake of ride duration would be a crap ride experience, frankly.

Project Exodus on the other hand has over 200 ft of kenetic energy to burn yet seems a bit of a waste to have a much longer ride duration cut short.

 

[Matt N]

In fairness there’s not a lot more that could’ve been done with Nemesis to make it any longer (Thank God.) obviously it would lose momentum & adding length for the sake of ride duration would be a crap ride experience, frankly.

Regarding Nemesis; I agree. Given the ride’s constraints, I think it ends at exactly the right time, personally.

 

[dazza4783]

Best recreation i've seen so far, looks spot on.

 

[Skyscraper]

Best recreation i've seen so far, looks spot on.

Isn't the element after the splashdown an inversion in the concept images though? In that video it's a wave turn.
Apart from that, that mockup is the best so far.

 

[dazza4783]

Isn't the element after the splashdown an inversion in the concept images though? In that video it's a wave turn.
Apart from that, that mockup is the best so far.

No, it's a wave turn in the plans.

 

[Skyscraper]

No, it's a wave turn in the plans.

Ah so it is. Looks like an inversion from far away lol.

 

[Tom]

Best recreation i've seen so far, looks spot on.

Makes it look the best anyway. No obvious loss of speed on the 'splashdown'....might even be a launch when it comes to fruition .

Only major criticism is the Stealth-type drop that we seem to be headed for. Just doesn't seem right when the ride is in the same park.

 

[Matt.GC]

In fairness there’s not a lot more that could’ve been done with Nemesis to make it any longer (Thank God.) obviously it would lose momentum & adding length for the sake of ride duration would be a crap ride experience, frankly.

Project Exodus on the other hand has over 200 ft of kenetic energy to burn yet seems a bit of a waste to have a much longer ride duration cut short.

Spot on with this. Nemesis uses most of it's energy and does it well, when you hit the brakes you're not actually going that fast but you never feel like it's letting up. This is because it's well designed. Nemesis is short but does the job, but Alton needed a lengthier ride duration coaster and got that with The Smiler and should the park build another coaster in the future it seems obvious to me that giving us a decent length ride with launches seems like a no brainer to me.

Over at Thorpe, I'm struggling to understand why the Swarm is so short other than for budgetary reasons. Height isn't an issue so it could have been built a little taller and in terms of layout it seems to run out of ideas after the zero G. It goes into a helix which is fun and then seems to waste energy ascending into the twist above the station before just kind of sloppily plugging in to the brake run. A couple of decent elements or a demon knot or something like that giving that extra 15 seconds of ride time after the helix would have made a massive difference.

This new coaster doesn't seem (I say seem because we ultimately don't know for sure) to be held back by anything other than money. There's plenty of height there to create more than enough speed for a decent length coaster, there's also ample land available to pretty much build what they want. Yet if the birds eye view plans are anything to go by, the one aspect of it that seems to stick right out is the one that's purposely designed to take all that earned energy from the large height out of it - and that's the massive brake run!

It just all seems a bit like a compromise between the marketing ("we have to break the height record") and finance ("you know we can't afford to go too nuts with the size of this thing") departments. This is unless of course some of this imagery is purposely vague and that long section at the end is filled with camel backs of something like that, or there's a section in the middle of the ride that they didn't need to depict in the artwork or on floor plans as it wasn't necessary for the consultation.

 

[Excalibur]

Am I right in thinking the general layout we see now can’t be changed to an extent, however going back to The Smiler plans wasn’t more and more stuff found out about the track layout overtime as in elements found?

 

[Skyscraper]

Am I right in thinking the general layout we see now can’t be changed to an extent, however going back to The Smiler plans wasn’t more and more stuff found out about the track layout overtime as in elements found?

The original plans for Smiler were deliberately designed so that half of the inversions were hidden.

 

[Matt N]

Am I right in thinking the general layout we see now can’t be changed to an extent, however going back to The Smiler plans wasn’t more and more stuff found out about the track layout overtime as in elements found?

I think what we’re seeing here will likely be the final layout, or pretty close to it; Chessington’s 2023 consultation reflected the coaster exactly as it was in the planning application, for what it’s worth.

 

[dazza4783]

Am I right in thinking the general layout we see now can’t be changed to an extent, however going back to The Smiler plans wasn’t more and more stuff found out about the track layout overtime as in elements found?

They altered some of the inversions to make it look like it didn't invert to try and keep the number of inversions a secret, but the layout (overview) was pretty much exactly as was built.
They were able to get away with that due to the fact that they didn't actually need to submit planning permission for the coaster itself, as long as it wasn't going over tree height. It was just the buildings they needed to submit permission for. If I remember rightly Thorpe did apply to get some form of waiver to having to submit planning permission for certain things, but I don't think it would cover anything of this size.
There may possibly be differences from this to the actual planning application that Thorpe submit, but I don't think it will be anything too drastic. It will be more detailed and we should have a better idea, or maybe even confirmation, of the manufacturer going by the track shape in the final plans.

 

[Skyscraper]

They altered some of the inversions to make it look like it didn't invert to try and keep the number of inversions a secret, but the layout (overview) was pretty much exactly as was built.
They were able to get away with that due to the fact that they didn't actually need to submit planning permission for the coaster itself, as long as it wasn't going over tree height. It was just the buildings they needed to submit permission for. If I remember rightly Thorpe did apply to get some form of waiver to having to submit planning permission for certain things, but I don't think it would cover anything of this size.
There may possibly be differences from this to the actual planning application that Thorpe submit, but I don't think it will be anything too drastic. It will be more detailed and we should have a better idea, or maybe even confirmation, of the manufacturer going by the track shape in the final plans.

Would expect the final plans to also show the actual station building/theme, as I assume that the building in the renderings is a placeholder.

 

[Plastic Person]

Merlin are very keen on Instagram friendly, iconographic 'set piece' theming; Wicker Man's human/ram head and it's adaptation to Colossus II at Heide Park, The Marmaliser, whatever is getting built around the final element on CWoA's new coaster.

The way this coaster appears to be designed, especially how compact elements loop around each-other, it could be seen that the ride itself is the set piece.

 

[dazza4783]

The sheer size of the thing, plus the splash down are most likely going to be the main focal points, but there will likely be other theming elements too.

 

[Steve74]

This new coaster doesn't seem (I say seem because we ultimately don't know for sure) to be held back by anything other than money. There's plenty of height there to create more than enough speed for a decent length coaster, there's also ample land available to pretty much build what they want. Yet if the birds eye view plans are anything to go by, the one aspect of it that seems to stick right out is the one that's purposely designed to take all that earned energy from the large height out of it - and that's the massive brake run!

Any money saved on the design and build of this thing will be spent on all the additional brake pads they'll need! Maybe they're aiming for it to be a carbon-neutral coaster and there'll be some sort of regenerative brakes which in turn power the lift hill!

They altered some of the inversions to make it look like it didn't invert to try and keep the number of inversions a secret, but the layout (overview) was pretty much exactly as was built.
They were able to get away with that due to the fact that they didn't actually need to submit planning permission for the coaster itself, as long as it wasn't going over tree height. It was just the buildings they needed to submit permission for. If I remember rightly Thorpe did apply to get some form of waiver to having to submit planning permission for certain things, but I don't think it would cover anything of this size.

It's odd that they needed planning permission for concrete buildings which - when compared to the Smiler track - are quite innocuous but not for the layout of the track itself!

 

[Skyscraper]

Any money saved on the design and build of this thing will be spent on all the additional brake pads they'll need! Maybe they're aiming for it to be a carbon-neutral coaster and there'll be some sort of regenerative brakes which in turn power the lift hill!

Or maybe the world's first solar-powered roller coaster?

 

[AstroDan]

It really is a pity on the length of this proposed rollercoaster.

I have done a lot of rides around the world, and comparisons to something like Goliath at SFGAm are probably most apt. But even Goliath has a longer ride time than this is likely to.

There's no two ways about it - what is there is going to be great, but you *will* get to the brake run and feel short changed. There simply aren't going to be enough elements to make you want to run round and queue another hour to ride again, which I did get with rides such as Maverick or Skyrush (and Skyrush is also quite short, but still longer than this). Exactly as I did on Goliath, when it blitzed into the brakes at some tremendous speed. I felt a similar sense of "that was too short" on Full Throttle at SFMM and Tennessee Tornado at Dollywood. Both solid rides, but the length really does drop them down my rankings.

For some reason, rides like Oblivion, Kingda Ka, Stealth et al. I don't have the same sense towards, I guess because they aren't pretending to have a layout. I don't know - odd psychology and perhaps totally hypocritical, but there we are.

 

[JAperson]

For some reason, rides like Oblivion, Kingda Ka, Stealth et al. I don't have the same sense towards, I guess because they aren't pretending to have a layout. I don't know - odd psychology and perhaps totally hypocritical, but there we are.

I get what you mean here though. Surely if a ride appears to have a longer layout you would expect it to do so and not having so makes you feel disappointed when riding it. I'm not saying you'll get that feeling on this ride although I do think it's likely. The only other tall coaster we have in this country is The Big One which is quite a long ride so I do wonder when people compare this to The Big One whether they will feel a little 'scammed' as it's not quite what they were expecting. I get this ride is probably trying to distance itself from The Big One and be something completely different but I just think people will just want that bit more too the ride. Even a helix at the end would help as that would make it do something completely different. I actually quite like the layout and think it's a really interesting ride and very cleverly designed I'm just not sure it's the right ride to break the UK's height record after 30 years.